(It.; Fr. doçaine, douçaine, doussaine, douchaine, dulceuse etc.; Sp. dulçayna, dulzayna, duçaina etc.).
Term widely documented in Romance languages from the 13th century to the 17th; it was apparently used for a number of quiet double-reed instruments, possibly including the Crumhorn. Tinctoris distinguished the ‘dulcina’ from the shawm, describing the former as having seven finger-holes and a thumb-hole and being ‘imperfect’ since ‘not every kind of piece can be played on it’. The instrument may have resembled a shawm, but with a cylindrical bore; it is possibly identifiable with the English ‘still shawm’ and with a unique instrument recovered from Henry VIII’s flagship Mary Rose. In 16th-century Italy the dolzaina may have had its bore bent back on itself, like the early bassoon or ‘dulcian’. Zacconi described it as having a range of a 9th, from c to d' (representing a tenor size); this dolzaina apparently had a double reed on a brass crook and may have been not unlike a Sordun. A canzona by Buonamente (1636) specifies a dolzaina with a range D–c': a sordun with additional finger-holes and keys would have had a range sufficient for the piece. This canzona constitutes the latest evidence for the use of the instrument.
Scholars’ understanding of the term has changed during the 20th century. Sachs regarded ‘dolzaina’ and ‘douçaine’ as alternative names for the crumhorn, whereas Kinsky distinguished between medieval and Renaissance forms, holding the former to be a type of bladder pipe and the latter to be similar to Praetorius’s cornamusa. Boydell rejected the identification of the dolzaina/douçaine as a wind-cap instrument, but Mayer argued that the term could refer to crumhorns in the 15th and 16th centuries. A shrill folk oboe, the dulzaina, is still in use in Spain (see Shawm, §5).
PraetoriusSM, ii
L. Zacconi: Prattica di musica (Venice, 1592/R)
C. Sachs: ‘Doppioni und Dulzaina: zur Namensgeschichte des Krummhorns’, SIMG, xi (1909–10), 590–93
G. Kinsky: ‘Doppelrohrblatt-Instrumente mit Windkapsel’, AMw, vii (1925–6), 253–96
A. Baines: ‘Fifteenth-Century Instruments in Tinctoris’s De inventione et usu musicae’, GSJ, iii (1950), 19–25
B. Klitz: ‘A Composition for Dolzaina’, JAMS, xxiv (1971), 113–18
B.R. Boydell: The Crumhorn and Other Renaissance Windcap Instruments (Buren, 1982), appx
K.T. Meyer: The Crumhorn: its History, Design, Repertory, and Technique (Ann Arbor, 1983), 14–23, 26–32
H.W. Myers: ‘The Mary Rose “Shawm”’, EMc, xi (1983), 358–60
E. Küller: ‘Eine Doppelrohrblattinstrument mit zylindrischer Bohrung: ein Beitrag zur Diskussion um Tinctoris’ “Dulcina”’, Collegium musicologicum: Festschrift Emil Platen, ed. M. Gutiérrez-Denhoff (Bonn, 1985, 2/1986), 8–20
BARRA R. BOYDELL